AFT Scotland Newsletter Autumn 2015

AFT Conference 2017 – Glasgow?

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Imagine the Association for Family Therapy Conference taking place in Scotland in 2017…Imagine it being a little nearer to your doorstep than Kent, or Brighton…Imagine the opportunity to listen to leading family therapists, to network, and to attend some really practical workshops right here in Scotland.

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At the moment we are still in the very early stages of planning the event, and we are open to all kinds of ideas and suggestions. We are also looking for an attractive and comfortable venue with plenty of space.

What ideas do you have? Who are the speakers you’d like to hear? What are the workshops you’d like to attend? And we’re also thinking about the things that make a conference fun, like the dinners, entertainment and after-dinner speakers. Maybe you know a good ceilidh band that would add some energy and culture to the event, and help us to digest our haggis and neeps.

Join the team!

This is a big project. We know that many of you are really busy. But right now we just need your ideas, and your hopes and dreams. We’d also love to know if you would like to join us for an hour or two a month for a Skype meeting.

Our biggest hope is that this special event will help us to grow stronger connections between the family therapists and systemic practitioners across Scotland, as well as the trainees in the current FTTN project. It will also help us to raise the profile of family therapy in Scotland.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

• Non-Violent Resistance

• Update on the FTTN Project

• Nick Child – Still sallying forth

Connections CONNECTIONS…

the newsletter of the Scotland Branch of the Association for Family Therapy.

Circulated to family therapists, systemic practitioners, family therapy trainees and other

people who are interested in the news and activities of family therapists in Scotland.

• Children in Scotland Conference

• Lunchtime learning on your laptop?

• Questions and Quotes

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2015 has been an extremely busy year for the Family Therapy Training Network…In April the Scottish Government gave the Family Therapy Training Network (FTTN) a generous grant, to fund four foundation level courses including one on Orkney. One of the courses is using an apprenticeship model, linking trainees from six different relationship agencies with accredited family therapists. This provides them with face-to-face experience of working with families, developing their practical skills alongside their learning.

Marian Gerry, the project lead, has been working hard to scope, network, develop and support the project, as well as organ-ising the relevant research around this ground-breaking

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model. She has involved a number of family therapists in the training and live supervision experiences, which have been exciting and stimulating.

Comments from trainees: ‘I can’t believe how lucky we are to get this kind of training! What a gift!’

After a live session with a family: ‘Do we have to stop at the end of the training project? Can’t we just go on working together like this?’

From a supervisor: ‘It’s been interesting and challenging going back to square one with the trainees and helping them to gain every ounce of experience from this amazing opportunity.’

Let’s hope there’s more funding in 2016 so that this excellent project can continue and develop.

News from the Family therapy Training network

Non-Violent Resistance workshop

with Peter Jakob

On Friday 13th November about 70 family therapists, systemic practitioners, trainees and other professionals enjoyed an inspiring workshop on non-violent resistance.

Peter described an effective and peaceful way for parents to increase their presence and concern for children engaging in challenging and potentially dangerous behaviours.

If you would like to know more about non-violent resistance and how it can help the families you work with, you can see a PowerPoint presentation about it at http://oxleas.nhs.uk/site-media/cms-downloads/Non_Violent_Resistance_CAMHS.pdf

You can also download various parent booklets, including NVR when your child is in a gang, from:

http://oxleas.nhs.uk/advice-and-guidance/children-and-young-peoples-services/nvr/parent-booklets/

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Still Sallying Forth Nick Child's Wellspring Lecture 2015 Nick Child spent several decades holding up the banner for AFT Scotland etcetera. Others of us have since taken over and relieved him of his flag-waving. He always said his main interest in AFT was to constructively critique the FT establishment. Now he says he is delighted to be free to follow his preferred projects. They’re a bit off the usual FT track … but they probably shouldn’t be! Previous campaigns You might remember that Nick’s last batch of campaigning came under the heading “Aspens”, the nickname for AFT’s network and project to raise the profile of systemic therapy in the non-statutory sector. Of course, in Scotland, FT has struggled to raise a profile even in the statutory sector / the NHS / CAMHS. Scotland has always been a lower profile thing - lots of people in other jobs than FT applying their own versions of (what used to be the main meaning of) Systemic Practice. That was one of Nick’s earliest campaigns (1980s), as a child psychiatrist in a "family-systems approach” CAMHS, arguing that broad systemic thinking and methods were more important than professionalising. Out on another limb Now Nick is dedicating his energy to another “limb” of the family systemic tree: high conflict family separation, and parental alienation in particular. And that requires the old systemic idea of working with and influencing wider agencies - in this case, sheriffs, judges, family courts and lawyers! His motivation to do this has come from realising how ignorant and prejudiced he was for so many decades in the helping professions. So now he is trying to understand that ignorance, and to make amends and he has been working and presenting on this in various places. In September he presented this topic to a Family Mediators’ conference in Holland. The best place now to see more on all this is the blog: thealienationexperience.org.uk, and also his overview of the field: tinyURL.com/NickChildPA What on earth was missing? One aspect of this has been to find out, recover and tell others about what on earth was missing in his common and professional experience and training over decades that meant he was blind to the spectrum of patterns that are absolutely no surprise when families separate, especially when there is hurt and enduring high conflict around. One blindness was for how badly the children suffer - indeed are clearly emotionally abused in severe circumstances, never mind the other risks and abuse that we know happens around separations. The Wellspring get-together This year Nick was invited to present the Wellspring Lecture. Previous lecturers include RD Laing and Susie Orbach, so the fame-rating has slipped since then! There he is on the Queens Hall booking pages (see picture). He agreed to innovate by drawing on the workshop format that FTists are familiar with - a format that was a key element in Nick’s keen affiliation to FT and AFT back in the 1980s. Nick received very positive feedback from those who heard his new - if also common sense - thinking on at the Wellspring event at the end of October. It was called: “Alienation: a multi-clan get-together about not wanting to get together”. Not many family therapists came, but lots of others did.

The whole process has led to some broadening of interest in family therapy, which is also the focus of the AFT Scotland Communication Project. As well as small group discussion and his material, Nick used excerpts from a wonderful Dutch film with subtitles: "Rewind: my parents’ divorce”. Read a bit more about that film in the two blogposts about it at the top of http://thealienationexperience.org.uk. (Only Nick has the DVD and rights to show this subtitled version, 50 minutes long, and declared by all who see it to be a quite uniquely high quality and astonishing documentary for reflection of all kinds.) Ask Nick You can engage Nick (at no cost) to, at least, show the Rewind film to any audience interested. Ask him to come to your FT branch or group and he’ll be happy to do so. So far, FT and AFT has followed Nick into the new territory that Nick leads us into. So now’s a good time to follow him into this one! And, of course, he can also add from a wide range of his presentations...including of course this Wellspring one. You can get more ideas from his websites, including his own: forallthat.com

Nick’s Outline

1. Introduction 2. Preferred format 3. Why alienation? 4. Affiliations 5. Attachment and gender 6. Labels 7. Persuasion and influence 8. The pastoral professional 9. Counter-intuitives 10. Attachment hurt 11. Relationship spectrum 12. Alienation – 2 &3 party patterns

By Nick Child

Lorem Ipsum Autumn 2015

Now that’s a great question!

Have you ever heard a family therapist use a really good question, or do you have some favourite systemic quotes?

AFT is collecting some thoughtful and interesting questions and quotes for a special project. We can only do this fun project if we have enough quotes…And, if we don’t get enough ideas, you’ll never find out the surprise!

So if you can think of any please let Karen know at karensholford@gmail.com.

Thanks!

Lunchtime learning on your Laptop?

A Pinterest board/website has been created that contains useful You Tube clips and TED talks, etc. for family therapists and trainees.

You don’t have to be a Pinterest user to access these resources. All you need to do is go to www.pinterest.com/AFTBranches/useful-youtube-and-ted-clips/ Then scroll through more than 80 topics and themes. When you find something you’d like to watch, just click on the picture and it will take you through to the original website where you can view the clip during your lunch break or coffee time. Simples!

The clips include speakers like Brene Brown, Jim Wilson, Michael White, Alan Cooklin, VS Ramachandran, Rudi Dallos, Kenneth Gergen, John Burnham, Barnett Pearce, Jaakko Seikkula, Ben Furman, Harlene Anderson and Kaethe Weingarten.

If you know of any other clips that you found interesting and useful, please let Karen know so she can add them to the list.

Don’t forget that there are dozens of creative ideas for family therapists on the AFT Scotland Pinterest boards at www.pinterest.com/aftscotland

Children in Scotland Conference

Eoin Power and Karen Holford attended the Children in Scotland Conference at Celtic Park, Glasgow on 4th and 5th November.

They set up an interactive stand with information leaflets, ideas about how family therapists can offer skills besides therapy, and a tree on which people could hang their ideas about what helps relationships to flourish (with the temptation of an M&S gift voucher). There were also some chocolates and fruit jellies to lure people in and arouse their curiosity…

Eoin and Karen offered a short workshop on using genograms to understand children in the context of their families, and to build relationships with ‘difficult to engage’ children and young people. Several key people attended this workshop including Jackie Brock, CEO of Children in Scotland and Val Corry, who has advised the government on education and is a freelance educational consultant. We heard them discussing the difference it would make if there was a family therapist available to every school…Jackie invited us to do more training on genograms for the Children in Scotland workshop schedule in the new year. Since then other key professionals have contacted Karen at the AFTS communication project to discuss on how we can collaborate on different projects…Watch this space!